In modern electronic devices power management is becoming ever more important. For example, battery operated devices acquire more computationally intensive features, such as playing video clips. Such computationally intensive features require more power. Yet, at the same time there is a demand for longer stand-by and operating times. Also, for environmental reasons it is important not to needlessly dissipate power.
To reduce the energy use of an electronic device, such as an Integrated circuit (IC), Dynamic Power Management (DPM) is used. DPM is a technique that scales the power delivered to an electronic device to such a level that it just meets the varying performance levels required for an application using the electronic device.
The workload of an electronic device changes dynamically while the application uses the electronic device. To scale the power delivered to the electronic device the amount of power needed in the future needs to be predicted. As the future power needs of an electronic device are more accurately predicted, the more power can be saved.
One way of prediction the future power needs of an electronic device is as follows: The power consumption of an electronic device is measured. From the past measurement of the electronic device a prediction is made of the future power needs of the electronic device. One crude way to make this prediction is by predicting that the future power needs will be equal to the current power consumption. As the workload of the electronic device is changing however, the past is not necessarily a good indication of the future power needs. Consequently, a prediction based on this method can significantly under or over predict.
When an under prediction is made, and as a result too few power is supplied, the performance of the device suffers, for example, the video or audio will show hic-ups. When a more serious under prediction is made, the device dysfunctions, and a system crash is the likely result.
In case of over prediction, too much power will be supplied. Part of this power will be lost. In this case batteries of the device drain faster than necessary.
It is a problem of the prior art to accurately predict the power needs of an electronic device.